Leading Through the Turn: How a Journey Mindset Can Help Leaders Find Success and Significance by Mitchell Elise

Author:Mitchell, Elise
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
Published: 2017-03-10T16:00:00+00:00

Third, Create a Culture of Try

Trust me, your team and your clients want you to try new things. Employees are empowered by a “let’s do it” mentality. Customers and clients want to know you can take them places they’ve never been and can’t get to on their own.

Leaders need to create a “greenhouse” environment that encourages teams to try new things and see what works without fear of punishment or embarrassment if it fails. Ultimately, you want a culture that’s not afraid to fail—it’s afraid not to try. This is part attitude, of course, but it’s also part process.

In other words, leaders first have to inspire people to try new things, encouraging them on the front end and rewarding effort regardless of the outcomes. That doesn’t mean all failures are “OK,” but employees should have a clear vision for what’s acceptable and what’s not so they aren’t walking on eggshells.

One way to create a culture of try is to ask yourself and your team “how might we” questions. Each word in that phrase is important. I’m a big fan of leading through asking rather than always telling, and I particularly like this simple but powerful approach for creative problem-solving developed by Warren Berger.3 You can open your mind to possibilities by starting the conversation in this way. The “how” part assumes there are solutions out there, and it gives creative confidence to the group—yes, we can find an answer. “Might” says we can put ideas out there that might or might not work, but either is okay when we are in brainstorming mode. Of course, the “we” is that we are going to figure it out together.

You can also put into place some simple processes that will enable and empower employees to try new ideas. The Design Council’s Double Diamond4 is a practical model used by industries and companies around the world. It involves four steps: discover, define, develop, and deliver.

In the early part of ideation, teams think broadly during the discovery phase, clarifying what the issues and opportunities are. They bring it back to a definition, identify what they’re solving for, and establish a design brief. Then the process goes back outward again for development of ideas, coming back to a close at the delivery stage. The finished concept can be tested and possibly recycled around the diamond once again. It’s not only a design process, but a model for improvement.

The hardest part of the Double Diamond model? Getting your team to “turn the corner”: to stop brainstorming and start refining and deciding on the final product. But good leaders know how to take ideas from concept to execution, getting things across the finish line.

A culture of try, however, also needs a process that sets teams up for success and helps them mitigate failure. For instance, you can establish an in-house “labs” initiative or work closely with a local accelerator or start-up incubator to get access to entrepreneurs who are creating new things. This provides a safe, formal structure for exploring and taking risks, and it sends a message that taking risks is encouraged and rewarded.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.